


Syd's (Third) Childhood Begins

by Rockinlibrarian



Category: Legion (TV)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Fix-It, Foster Care, Gen, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, The Astral Plane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-10 20:00:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20533751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rockinlibrarian/pseuds/Rockinlibrarian
Summary: Now that Charles Xavier understands the importance of Early Childhood Intervention for young mutants, Joan Barrett finds help raising her sensitive daughter, and Oliver Bird finds a reason to stay grounded.





	Syd's (Third) Childhood Begins

**Author's Note:**

> Syd came back so strong and radiant after her second childhood in the Astral Plane, it seemed such a shame that the timeline reset, sending her back to redo her less-than-ideal original childhood. But hmm, what changed in this timeline? Could someone's newfound passion for raising his son have resulted in advocacy for other young mutants? DUDE, suddenly I'm writing a NON-LOUDERMILK-CENTRIC Legion story, what's up with this?! Dang this show makes me creative.
> 
> I do still have another couple Loudermilk-centric stories in the works, so I haven't left that forever or anything....

In another universe, perhaps, Dr. Harwell would have been at a loss on what to do about this harried single mother and her overly-sensitive baby girl. How fortunate, then, that he happened to know one person who might actually have the answers. “I’m going to refer you to a specialist. Dr. Charles Xavier is currently forming a school in upstate New York for children with special needs, like Sydney.”

“A-a school, but— she’s 5 months old!”

“Not the school, Ms. Barrett, the doctor. I’m just pointing out his qualifications. Dr. Xavier has made it his life’s work to help the children the rest of us don’t know how to handle to reach their full potential. He’s got a boy of his own—very…_high-maintenance_ child, I understand, but he’s thriving under these methods. Everyone in pediatrics and child psychology now knows_ he’s_ who to call when faced with something— we’ve never…_seen_ before. And frankly,” he sighed, “I don’t know, this goes far beyond colic. Human touch is essential to proper child development. If Sydney’s going to grow up healthy, we need to consider a new approach.”

Ms. Barrett struck Charles as someone who liked the _idea_ of having a child, but was ill-equipped to deal with the reality of raising a unique _person_. Especially one as psychically susceptible as young Sydney appeared to be. But the apparent objective solution made him feel a bit sick to the stomach. “Believe me, I am the last person on earth to suggest you,” he gulped, “_give_ your child away. But perhaps we might consider a _co_-parenting situation of some sort.”

“You mean,” she made a face, “you and I take turns…?”

“Not me, personally. I have enough on my plate with the school and my own family. But I do actually know of the perfect couple. They have no children of their own, but they run an institution quite similar to my own school, focused less on academics and more on life skills.”

“That…still makes it sound like you want me to institutionalize her.”

Charles winced. “Perhaps ‘institution’ was the wrong word to use to describe Summerland. It’s more of a spa, or resort, to be honest. And it caters more to young adults who go of their own free will than to children sent away, so we’re not talking…rows of identical bassinets with Sydney dropped into the middle and forgotten. I mean that the Birds, who happen to have vast experience and resources when it comes to bringing out the best in…gifted individuals like Sydney, could raise her as if she was their own. But,” he corrected himself, “she would be _your_ own, collectively. You would work together. _You_ are welcome to stay at Summerland, too; if not full-time, as often as you’d like.”

He hesitated only slightly, before plowing onward. “We have such an arrangement ourselves, with another family near us. My wife is…often unwell, and I am frequently called away, so our David spends a lot of time with the Hallers. Their daughter has truly taken him under her wing, _her_ little brother, she says. It offers him the best of both worlds: _we_ have the expertise when it comes to dealing with David’s special needs, and it’s good for him to know his family history; but _they_ grant him the _stability_ that we’re not able to give him on our own. It takes a village to raise a child, as the proverb says.

“If you think about it, a partnership—a _co-parenthood_—with the Birds may be not only what is best for Sydney, but is best for you, too.”

Ms. Barrett looked thoughtful. “Okay,” she said finally. “Let’s consider it.”

“Brilliant. Now I suppose I should actually ask the Birds what they think.”

“Welcome to Summerland,” Dr. Xavier said a few weeks later, as he led Joan Barrett, baby carrier hooked over her arm, into a green, green grove.

“It’s beautiful.” Joan spun slowly around as she walked, taking in the tall trees, the fresh smells, the quiet. Not entirely quiet, either— there was laughter, friendly shouting, and she caught sight of several young adults running from —was one of them flying? No, no they must have all been running, from the Lloyd-Wrightish-looking main building to a nearby tennis court. She spotted a swing set among the bushes. It did, admittedly, look like a lovely place to grow up.

“Dr. Loudermilk!” Xavier hailed a tall man in a sweater vest, balanced on a ladder by the door as he worked in a tangle of wires about it.

The man turned, caught the ladder before falling off it, and jumped down. “Oh hello, Dr. Xavier!” He headed toward them, and his eyes lit at the sight of the baby carrier. “Is this…h-her?”

“Allow me to introduce Ms. Joan Barrett,” Dr. Xavier said, then gestured to the carrier, “and of course, Sydney. Ms. Barrett, this is Dr. Cary Loudermilk, head of Research and Development here at Summerland.”

“Welcome. Good to meet you.” He shook Joan’s hand. “And, I-I suppose I’ll be acting as a …a sort of uncle-figure to, to this one, while she’s here.” He looked somewhat wary, but then smiled toward Dr. Xavier. “And Kerry’s really looking forward to being a big sister, for once.”

“I thought you said they didn’t have children of their own?” Joan asked Xavier.

“Oh, the Birds do not,” Dr. Loudermilk answered. “Kerry’s _my _sister. She’d just much prefer— to be _also_ considered a sister to Sydney, rather than an aunt. She’s…_young_….Ish.” His tone of voice changed, as if he was directing his words pointedly to someone standing on top of his head. “And she’ll be out to meet you _when the time is RIGHT_.”

Dr. Xavier for some reason chuckled. “We’d most like to meet the Birds themselves right now, if you could direct us.”

“Ye-OH.” Dr. Loudermilk started to turn toward the door, then stopped and turned a worried stare toward Dr. Xavier, who, after a moment, frowned. Neither man said anything for several seconds.

“Is…something wrong?” Joan wavered.

“No! No. We’re fine.” Dr. Loudermilk waved at the door, which slid open, and laughed shortly as he led them inside. “It’s fine. I’ll— I’ll take you to see Melanie, n-now.”

As they followed him down a bright, glassy hallway, Joan watched Dr. Xavier out of the corner of her eye. He had a faraway look, as if thinking very hard about something else. There _was_ something wrong. Was it _really_ safe to leave Sydney with these people?

A well-tailored blonde woman met them in the doorway of a clean-lined sitting room, and greeted Dr. Xavier with a hug. “Charles! It’s good to see you again. How’s the family?”

_This_ exchange seemed suspicious, too. They were smiling with their mouths, but having a rather desperate conversation with their eyes. “Excellent! Gabrielle …has been doing much better lately. She really appreciates those records you sent. And David’s growing like a weed, naturally.”

“I do see that boy doing great things one day.” She smiled as she turned toward Joan, and this time it seemed genuine. “Hello, you must be Joan.”

“Yes! Yes, forgive me.” Dr. Xavier gestured one way, then the other. “Ms. Joan Barrett, Dr. Melanie Bird.”

“You’re all doctors,” Joan said slowly. “Are you…_sure_ this isn’t a medical institution?”

Dr. Bird laughed gently. “We’re just slightly over-educated, is all. And please, call me Melanie.” She reached for Joan’s hand and guided her to a streamlined loveseat, setting the baby carrier on the floor in front of them. “We’ll get to know each other while you boys _go find Oliver_.”

Joan watched the men leave, then turned to Melanie. “Be honest with me, is some—”

“THE BABY’S HERE!” A girl of fourteen or fifteen skidded into the room and slid to the baby carrier on her knees.

“Kerry, she doesn’t like to be tou—” Melanie tried to say, but not before the girl had given the baby a quick high-five.

She pulled her hand away as if shocked, and said, “Whoa. No kidding,” as the baby started to cry. Joan prepared to leap up and say _Don’t pick her up, you’ll just make it worse!_ but the girl immediately started to rock the carrier instead, making shushing noises and talking baby-talk. “Yeah I did, I felt that,” she cooed. “You’ve got boundary issues, you do. That’s just supposed to happen with one other person and _you’re_ not him, little one, no, you’re not!” The baby calmed down and stared as the girl continued to make faces at her.

“Well,” Joan sighed. “You’re a fast learner, at least.”

The girl kept jiggling the carrier with one hand while she reached the other up toward Joan. “Hi. I’m Kerry Loudermilk. I’m the muscle behind this operation.” This she added with such a perfectly straight face that Joan had to turn her double take into a triple.

She shook her head. One thing at a time. She pointed from the girl, and then out the door. “So Dr. Loudermilk—”

“Yep,” said Kerry.

“He said _his_ name was Cary.”

“We spell it different. And before you say anything, I _know_ we don’t look anything alike. It’s called_ mutation_.” She started cooing to the baby again. “Just like you, Little Miss Thin-skin. We’re all weirdo mutants here.”

“Kerry,” Melanie said warningly.

“I’m serious, she felt just like Cary when we’re just about to merge, like she was about to…suck me up inside her, or I was going to suck _her_ up, it’s no wonder she doesn’t like to be touched, you can’t just go sucking up everybody, you know,” she went back into the baby-talk, “that’s what _brothers_ are for, not _everybody_.”

Joan felt bewildered. “Sydney doesn’t…suck anyone up. The opposite, if anything. She doesn’t let anyone get _near_ her.”

“It’s not always clear exactly how a person’s mutations might ultimately behave until they’re older,” Melanie said. “Kerry was speaking from her own experience. For now, we just need to be—_sensitive_ to Sydney’s sensitivity. We’ll work out adaptations to help it become less of a handicap, and help her learn to hone her uniqueness into a real asset as we learn more about it. Before we even get that far, while she’s still a baby, Cary can— that’s _male _Cary, _Dr._ Loudermilk—”

“Not that I didn’t sit through that whole dang double-PhD program, too,” Kerry whispered to the baby, “I just didn’t pay attention.” The baby cooed at her.

“—he will most certainly come up with _some_ sort of technological innovation that will make it easier for us to handle her when we need to, without it causing trauma. But we’ll also make a real effort to respect her boundaries, and teach her to set and enforce whatever boundaries she needs to be comfortable in her own body, too.”

“And _I_ will teach you self-defense.” Kerry leaned in conspiratorially toward the baby. “And _offense_. And fencing!” The baby laughed. “I think she likes that plan!” She started to give the baby a fist-bump, caught herself, and wiggled her fingers at her instead.

“That sounds… empowering,” Joan stuttered.

“But, you’re still worried.” Melanie peered so astutely at her that she blushed, ashamed of her doubts. “What’s bothering you?”

Joan took a deep breath. “I appreciate what you’re doing, and it all sounds wonderful in words, it’s just… you and Dr. Loudermilk were being—you were _keeping_ something from me, when I arrived here. I could tell something was wrong. Dr. Xavier seemed bothered by it, too. Just…please tell me if there’s anything nefarious, if the men are controlling you or some—”

“HAH!” said Kerry. But her face fell almost as much as Melanie’s.

The other woman sighed and smiled in a sad way. “I’m sorry to have worried you. It’s nothing— _dangerous_…to Sydney, at least. It’s just…” she sighed again. “My husband, Oliver, has been having trouble staying…_present_, lately. Don’t get me wrong. He’s a good man, and he seemed enthusiastic about Sydney coming here, so I’m sure it’s not any reluctance about this—“

“Oliver’s a terrific dad!” Kerry exclaimed. “Well, when he’s not stuck in his brain. I never really knew my birth father so I don’t have much to compare him to, but still. And I _can_ say confidently from forty-three years of experience that Cary’s a really excellent big brother, and he’s _always_ here, so she’ll have _that_, at least.”

Joan’s mouth formed the words “Forty-three?” and Melanie replied softly, “Don’t ask.” She placed a hand on Joan’s knee. “The point is, Sydney won’t lack for positive male role models even if Oliver _is_ being…_flightier_ than he should be. And the rest of us know what we’re doing without him.”

“Well, she wouldn’t have had _any_ positive male role models at home,” Joan admitted. “Thank you for explaining. I’m sorry for your l- troubles.”

“Oliver would have been so _great_ with her, though,” Kerry said wistfully.

“He still might,” Melanie snapped. “He _will_. _Charles_ is here now.”

“It keeps getting worse,” Cary was telling Charles just then, in the far side of the building. “Each time, he stays there a little longer, and each time he comes back it takes him longer and longer to readjust. And he goes back in again sooner each time, too. We’re h-honestly afraid that, one of these days, he’s going to…to forget to come back entirely.”

“And this was supposed to keep him anchored in the physical world?” Charles said, placing a hand on the helmet of the diving suit that sat in the middle of the room. There was a body in the suit, but whether there was a _person_ there was harder to tell.

“Theoretically.” Cary shrugged. “But anymore all it seems it does is keep his body from atrophying while he neglects it.”

“It sounds like he needs a psychologist more than a psychic, but I’ll see what I can do.”

“He _had_ Melanie,” Cary said sadly, “but she can’t go in after him.”

Charles focused on the face barely visible through the grate in the suit, until he caught the faintest glimmer of a line stretching away from it. “I found the path. I promise I will return soon, ideally with your friend.”

The physical world fell away as he followed the glimmering life line into a mass of noise. That was the best way to describe it. It was sound, and it had mass. It was music, but it oozed in towering heaps in every direction as he pushed his way through. He finally spotted a man lying in a hammock woven of the music, directing more globules of music into ever taller stalagmites in front of him.

“Oliver,” Charles called. The music continued to pile up and spill over. Sighing, Charles reached out to lift the record player needle that materialized in his hand, and repeated, “OLIVER.”

The music vanished, dropping the man who had been in the hammock to the transparent ground. “Foul!” he protested. “Absolutely not kosher!”

Charles rolled his eyes and pulled a mixer board fader almost to the bottom before carefully replacing the ephemeral record needle. Smaller bubbles of music seeped up around them. Oliver peevishly began to weave them into a new hammock. Charles gathered the bubbles across from him into an armchair. “A little ambiance is lovely but we have to tone it down,” he said, sitting in the chair and leaning toward Oliver, his fingers steepled. “Do you understand, Oliver? I need you to _listen to me_.”

Oliver squinted at him and smiled warily. “We’ve met,” he hazarded. “Care for a scotch?” He pulled a bottle from the air to his left with one hand and two small glasses from the right with the other, and started to pour.

“No, thank you, I need to focus.” Charles swept a low table in between them and caught the second scotch glass before it crashed, setting it down gently. “YOU need to focus.”

Oliver kept squinting at him. “Arthur Lowery, the Blue Moon, Rochester?”

“Uh, no. Charles Xavier, Oxford via New York. I do what you do. Only better. Because _I remember to come home_.”

Oliver tapped his scotch glass a few times in the air. “I was just _thinking_ about going home. Where’s it gone off to?”

Charles reached into the direction he’d come from and unrolled an image of Summerland there.

“Ohhhh. Right,” Oliver said. He finished the glass of scotch.

“I hear you’ve been gone two days this time. Your family is concerned, and I am, too, particularly now that young Sydney has come to stay.”

Oliver nodded. “Mmm.”

“You don’t have the slightest idea what I’m talking about, do you.”

“Well no, it’s obvious, they moved to Sydney two days ago. I never did care for Australia, anyway.”

“Do you remember me calling last week?”

“Who’s…Last Week again?”

“Last week isn’t a who, it’s a when. YOU were the who I called. I told you Ms. Barrett would be bringing Sydney today. You and Melanie were setting up a nursery for her overlooking the football pitch. Cary had just installed speakers that would play different lullabies depending which bars of her cot she kicked. And you told me you were looking forward to teaching her the ukulele. Does any of this sound familiar?”

“Oh.” Oliver frowned over this, and said, as if to himself, “She _does_ need to learn the ukulele.”

“I arrived today expecting to find a man who had thoroughly embraced impending fatherhood, only to discover him gallivanting about the astral plane as if the fate of the earth depended on his ability to,” he waved at the bubbles around them, “make music _solid_. It’s not a good look.”

“It is very irresponsible on his part,” Oliver agreed.

“Oliver, _focus_, YOU a—” Maybe he needed to reframe this. “What would _you_ recommend, if you were the father of this sensitive, gifted child? What would you do?”

Oliver paused, seriously considering. “I would…tell her stories. Edifying, illuminative stories. I would teach her the joy of good hard work and the discipline of free play. I would sing to her. And I would _most definitely_ teach her to play the ukulele.”

Charles smiled and summoned up a video feed of the sitting room, where the women were still talking, and Kerry had started dancing with the baby carrier. “She’s waiting for you now, back home at Summerland. Shall you go and _be_ that father to her, for real?”

“I- uh.” Oliver nervously grasped for the second glass of scotch, but his eyes stayed fixed on the sitting room feed.

“I know the astral plane is exciting.” Charles sat back and gazed into the infinite reaches above them. “It feels so _powerful_ to create whole worlds around yourself. But I learned the hard way that there is nothing _more_ powerful than having a child who depends on you for guidance. If you withhold that guidance, ignore that responsibility, thinking your time is better spent making big, impressive psychic pictures… you leave them adrift to crash, busting themselves and everyone around them to pieces. That’s _catastrophic_ power. But if you _teach_ them all the big important things you’ve discovered, they in turn spread the fruits of your knowledge to others, and so on, rippling out, making waves, building a true reality.”

“Can I, can I bring _her_ here, occasionally?”

“_Occasionally_,” Charles stressed. “For well-regulated periods of time.”

Kerry squealed, “OLIVER!” and ran to hug him when he arrived in the sitting room. Melanie looked far less pleased.

“Good of you to join us,” she said bitingly. She crossed her arms over her chest and waited for him to cross over to her.

He did, head bowed and eyes slightly raised in the best puppy-dog plea he could muster. “I effed up. And I am very sorry.” He rested his hands on her upper arms and drew her close enough that their foreheads met. Her eyes softened slightly, but were still disappointed. “I should have been here to greet Sydney when she arrived.”

She gave him the most incredulous of smiles, and said, “Would you like to meet her now?” She shook him off slightly as she turned toward the woman on the sofa. “Joan Barrett, Oliver Bird.”

“And this is Sydney.” The woman held out a baby carrier, inviting him to join her on the sofa. He sat and held the carrier.

The baby’s big round eyes met his. He could feel her mind wondering at him, too chaotic to form real English words yet, but her meaning was clear enough, anyway. _Who are you?_

He broke into a smile. “I’m Papa, Miss Sydney.” He could feel Melanie relax and slide down beside him, resting her head on his shoulder to smile at the baby, too. On the other side he caught a jumble of emotions from the baby’s mother, relief most prominent. But these barely registered in his periphery. Not while the baby was talking to him.

_Hi, Papa, I’m Sydney!_ She gave him a big, gummy grin. _Will you tell me a story?_

He scoffed. “_Will_ I? Miss Sydney, you have no idea how many stories I have to tell you. We can start talking now and not stop until you’re thirty-seven. Would you like to hear the one about the clever girl and the bear?”

Melanie and Dr. Xavier exchanged a knowing look over his shoulder. They needn’t worry, Oliver thought. The astral plane didn’t seem quite as sparkly as it had just ten minutes ago. He had a fabulous universe to help build right here.


End file.
